]]>Don Draper, meet Sling TV: The recently launched online TV subscription service started to carry AMC and IFC as well as the Epix family of movie channels Wednesday, which means that Sling TV subscribers can now tune in live for episodes of shows like The Walking Dead and Mad Men.

AMC and IFC are part of Sling’s $20 base package, which also includes ESPN1 and ESPN2 as well as TNT, TBS, Galavision, HGTV and a handful of other cable channels. Sling TV is also introducing a new Hollywood add-on package that includes Epix, Epix 2, Epix 3, Epix Drive-In and Sundance TV. The add-on package will cost customers an additional $5 a month, just like Sling’s existing add-ons.

The Hollywood add-on package will come with a replay feature to catch up on shows up to seven day after they aired. That’s neat, but likely won’t help to make Sling’s catch-up policy any less confusing.

Currently, the service offers three-day catch-up for channels like HGTV, Food Network, Galavision and a few others, but no catch-up at all for ESPN, Cartoon Network and TNT. But wait, there is more: “AMC and IFC will have the 3-Day-Replay feature for select content,” a Sling TV spokesperson told me, adding: “We are looking to work with AMC Networks to expand this feature moving forward.”

Inconsistent catch-up rights notwithstanding, the addition of Epix, IFC and especially AMC could help Sling to win over more would-be cord cutters looking to ditch pay TV for a cheaper alternative. Mad Men and The Walking Dead are some of those appointment TV shows that fans try to watch as soon as they air in order to avoid spoilers. Getting access to them through a $20 plan does sound pretty reasonable, considering that buying individual episodes in HD would cost consumers $12 per month for a single show.

For a first look at Sling TV, check out my previously recorded video below:

]]>Sling TV, the online TV streaming service from Dish Networks, is now available to everyone: The service ended its invitation-only soft launch late Sunday night and began to accept sign-ups from everyone on its website.

Sling offers consumers live access to a total of 15 channels, including ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, CNN, HGTV, Cartoon Network and others for $20 a month. New to this basic package are Galavision, El Rey Network and a channel for Maker Studios content, which had been previously announced but initially wasn’t part of the invite-only beta test. AMC is going to be added to the base package soon, according to a Sling TV press release. There’s no word yet on whether Sling will also add other channels that are part of the AMC Networks family, including IFC, Sundance TV and WE TV.

Sling subscribers can elect to add more channels through three different add-on packages that cost $5 each. These include a news and information package, a kids and family package and a sports add-on package that offers access to additional ESPN channels and a few other sports networks. As of Monday, subscribers will also be able to use ESPN’s WatchESPN apps, but the content available to them will depend on their individual subscription: Sling TV’s base package unlocks ESPN1, ESPN2 and ESPN3 streams, whereas the added sports package will provide access to more content.

Sling TV is catering to cord cutters and what the company calls “cord haters,” meaning people who would love to get rid of cable but haven’t been able to in the past, primarily because of sports. Sling wants to win over this audience by offering them a lower-priced package without some of the strings that are usually attached with a traditional pay TV service. For example, Sling TV customers will be able to cancel any time, and don’t need commit to year-long contracts.

However, Sling TV couldn’t completely do away with the limitations of its industry. Some of the most advanced features of the service, which include the ability to rewind and fast forward in a current show or go back to any show that has aired within the last 72 hours, aren’t available on most networks due to contractual restrictions. In addition, Sling TV is only available on one single device at a time.

Check this video for a first look at Sling TV:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od3yR0D-c68]

This post was updated at 9:33am with information about AMC coming to Sling TV.

]]>Online TV streaming service Sling TV is about to get bilingual: Sling TV has struck an agreement with Univision to carry its Spanish-language broadcast and cable networks, both companies announced Monday. The deal could help Sling, which is currently in an invite-only beta test, with an audience that is most likely to cut the cord.

Under the agreement, Sling will be able to carry Univision, UniMás, Univision Deportes, Galavisión, El Rey Network, Bandamax, De Película, De Película Clásico, Telehit, Tlnovelas and FOROtv.

There’s no word yet on how Sling, which is owned and operated by Dish, is going to integrate the networks into its service. The company introduced a $20 base plan with 12 networks, including ESPN and TNT, at CES last month. In addition, it is offering a $5 kids and family bundle and a $5 news and information bundle as add-on packages. Company executives said at CES that they will launch a sports add-on package as well, and Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch actually hinted at a Spanish-language plan as well.

It’s possible that Sling could build a completely separate base package for Spanish-language viewers, or offer some of Univision’s content as an add-on package. It’s also likely that it will offer Univision Desportes as part of its sports package. I asked a Sling TV spokesperson for details, but have yet to hear back.

]]>Live TV is coming to Chromecast, with a little help from Sling: Sling Media added Chromecast support to its Slingplayer apps for iPhones, iPads and Android phones Wednesday, making it possible to cast live TV and DVR recordings to any Chromecast-equipped TV. Users can either cast programming from a local Slingbox or remotely access their Slingbox to cast to any Chromecast adapter within the same network. Support for Android tablets is scheduled to follow soon.

Here’s a quick demo of the feature, which I recently filmed in our office:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntt5VHGdzmg]

Chromecast support is available to anyone who owns a Slingbox 350 or 500 or the newer SlingTV or Slingbox M1 devices — basically, any 2012 or newer Sling device will work. This also means that the feature is only available to Sling users who have cable or some other form of pay TV, since none of the supported devices support over-the-air broadcast TV. Chromecast owners interested in an antenna-based solution may want to take a look at Tablo or Simple.tv instead.

]]>Sling Media revamped its line of place shifting boxes, introducing a new entry-level device dubbed the M1 that’s going to retail for $150, and a slightly overhauled SlingTV, which is basically the same hardware as the two-year-old Slingbox 500 but with new apps and an overhauled UI.

Both devices are still based on the same premise: Consumers who have cable at home and want to watch live TV or DVR recordings on the go can use a Slingbox to stream to mobile devices, computers and even Roku boxes, and viewers that have one cable box but don’t want to rent another can use the device to shift TV within their own home.

What’s new is a growing focus on online apps and content: SlingTV, which retails for $300, comes with apps for Blockbuster’s VOD service and DishWorld. The device is technically capable of running HTML5 TV apps for other services as well, but Sling Media SVP and General Manager Michael Hawkey told me during a recent interview that he doesn’t have the deals to include services like YouTube or Netflix just yet.

The new SlingTV, which is basically the same as the Slingbox 500 with a new name and UI.

SlingTV also comes with a new, flashier UI that includes a modern, dynamic TV guide that can be sorted by categories and that includes real-time sports metadata from Thuutz, allowing sports fans to see which of the games currently airing is the most exciting. Asked why cable subscribers need yet another guide, Hawkey told me that some consumers are stuck with legacy boxes with much uglier and less useful grid guides, adding that this would essentially bring the power of a modern cable box like the Comcast X1 to households with legacy devices. Existing Slingbox 500 owners will get the guide and new UI with a system upgrade.

The new guide is exclusive to SlingTV, which features HDMI pass-through, making it possible to take a digital HD signal from a cable box and overlay the guide on top of it. The newly-introduced M1 doesn’t come with these bells and whistles and instead squarely focuses on place-shifting. In many ways, it’s similar to it’s slightly more expensive predecessor, the Slingbox 350, save for the addition of integrated Wi-fi.

In addition to these hardware changes, Sling is also re-introducing its desktop apps for Windows and OS X, and Hawkey said that it is looking to discontinue its web app in the near future — which seems backwards to me, given that it will lock out Chromebook users. But then again, I’m not really the target audience of these devices anyway: Both the Slingbox M1 and the SlingTV require cable TV to work. The company stopped selling models with integrated tuners for over-the-air TV years ago.

In a presentation explaining his bold vision for the company, DISH’s CEO Charlie Ergen detailed plans to provide seamless mobile access to subscription TV content (based around DISH’s Sling and Hopper technology), and a plan to offer fixed wireless broadband to the estimated 40 million households that lack access to high bandwidth fiber or cable networks. Crucially, the latter would be accomplished using a combination of Clearwire’s 2.5GHz spectrum as well as satellite broadband.

That’s the theory, but in practice commentators have questioned whether the leverage inherent in DISH’s bid – for what is a considerably larger company – will constrain the ability of a merged Sprint/DISH to invest in the Sprint network and implement these plans. Further, many expect that Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank, will outbid Ergen – despite his protestations to the contrary. Ergen’s vision for DISH’s future is bold and exciting, but the question ultimately is whether Sprint is crucial to achieving it, and whether it can even work without Clearwire.

Sprint not a requirement for mobile delivery

With respect to the delivery of seamless mobile video, DISH already has most of the necessary technology available. After all, you can already use Sling on your mobile device today. The only real constraint is that the cost of wireless capacity makes it prohibitively expensive to watch mobile video on a metered 4G data plan. If DISH does indeed acquire Sprint, then it could potentially exempt Sling content from any data caps implemented for Sprint subscribers, thereby making seamless usage more feasible (and an attractive marketing point for potential new subscribers).

Nonetheless, there is nothing unique about Sprint’s network that makes it a necessary component to that strategy: DISH could just as easily shop its AWS-4 spectrum to T-Mobile for instance, which could deliver a similar offering.

Wireless broadband crucial for success

Unlike DISH’s mobile video plans, which are responding to potential longer-term shifts in video consumption, DISH’s ambitions to deliver fixed broadband to the home appear to be far more critical to the near-term competitive position of its satellite TV business. Importantly, the entire plan appears to be predicated on the use of Clearwire’s spectrum for a national deployment. In particular, DISH is at a substantial disadvantage compared to cable and telco TV solutions, which offer integrated broadband and video-on-demand capabilities.

DISH has been attempting to acquire around 40MHz of spectrum from Clearwire since last summer, and it is hard to see where else it could hope to dig up that much spectrum for a fixed wireless broadband network, at a reasonable price – unless DISH uses its own AWS-4 spectrum. However doing so would limit Ergen’s leverage to strike a deal with a wireless operator. Alternatively, DISH could attempt to repurpose LightSquared’s spectrum, but that would be fraught with difficulties.

The greater flexibility DISH has in realizing its mobile video plans vs its fixed broadband ones suggests it may be far more important for it to acquire some of Clearwire’s spectrum than to buy all of Sprint right now. After all, if Deutsche Telekom is willing to strike a deal with DISH after completing its merger with MetroPCS, then Ergen could deploy the 2.5GHz Clearwire spectrum on T-Mobile’s network.

So the question is, might SoftBank agree to sell part of Clearwire’s spectrum to DISH, in exchange for DISH agreeing to withdraw its bid for Sprint? That would certainly be logical, but with two billionaires’ egos at stake, it’s never a given that the most rational outcome will prevail.

]]>Sling Media is back: The original place shifter is launching two new devices in time for the holiday season, promising higher resolution and additional features that could eventually transform them into a home media hub. But the devil is in the details, as I found out during a somewhat painful test of the new Slingbox 500 – and the strategy to hold back on advanced features may eventually come back to hurt Sling.

The hardware

First, here’s all you need to know about the new hardware in a nutshell: Sling has been an innovator in the space of place shifting, making it possible to stream your TV signal from your cable box to PCs and mobile devices inside and outside of your house. That’s pretty much what the new hardware offers as well, with some added bells and whistles: The new Slingbox 350 is an entry-level model that sells for $180. It’s essentially like the older Slingbox solo, but with a more compact form factor. Also new: Up to 1080p streaming and an integrated IR blaster, so you won’t have to fiddle with extra cables and anymore to control your set-top-box.

The new Slingbox 500.

The Slingbox 500 adds an HDMI connection to the mix, making it possible to daisy-chain it between your cable box and your TV – something that may look familiar to anyone who has ever checked out a Google TV device. And it has two USB ports, which will eventually offer the option to add external storage for personal media – more on that later. Sling has also redone its software, offering new players for mobile devices and the option to beam photo slideshows straight to your TV.

The value proposition

Sling’s media team recently invited me to a demo and briefing about the new units, and their pitch sounded pretty compelling. The basic gist of it: The Internet was supposed to make TV more convenient, but it got actually more complicated. You’ve got apps from operators that work inside your house, but not on the go, apps that have some content but not other shows and apps that work on some carriers, but not elsewhere “This isn’t TV Everywhere. This is TV all over the place,” Sling’s Vice President of Marketing Jay Tannenbaum told me.

Sling thinks that it’s instead easier to get back to the basic idea of place-shifting, which makes your entire TV subscription content available everywhere. Of course, this means that you still need a traditional TV subscription – Slingboxes have never really been about cord cutting, and the new iteration is even less so, as none of the new models features an integrated ATSC tuner capable of receiving over-the-air broadcasts. Sling plans to eventually sell an USB adapter for that purpose, but Sling’s Senior Vice President and General Manager Raghu Tarra told me that over-the-air usage in the past has been “in the single digits.”

The actual experience

Sling send me review units of both devices to test, which made me wonder: who of my friends still has cable? Eventually I found someone gracious enough to host me in his living room for a few hours, and I thanked him by unhooking all of his TV equipment – only to stumble onto a number of bumps on the road. I concentrated on the more capable Slingbox 500 with its HDMI ports – but quickly found out that HDMI simply wouldn’t work with the setup I had at my disposal.

The problem: Some TV operators encrypt the digital signal on HDMI, something that’s known as High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection, or HDCP. And in my case, using a Motorola set-top box leased by Comcast, every single channel seemed to be encrypted. Sling is anticipating these hick-ups and thus asking consumers to also connect the box via component cables.

These can theoretically transmit 1080p as well, but it’s unclear if every set-top box will serve 1080p via component. There is definitely one added step of converting the signal to analog and then back to digital, and in my case, the signal looked considerably worse. That alone is kind of a deal breaker for something you would permanently make part of all of your big screen TV viewing.

The other problem is that this fallback hook-up makes the whole set-up unnecessarily complicated, in my case adding probably an extra 40 minutes as I tried to figure out what exactly was going on with the HDMI signal. Said my host: “I would have put it back in the box 30 minutes ago.”

The bigger issue

Of course, I may have stumbled across the worst-case scenario. The Sling folks told me that Dish, for example, only encrypts its HBO channel via HDCP, and they hope that even that will eventually go away. “We don’t crack HDCP,” said Tannenbaum, adding that the company’s own encryption of streams could help to get studios more comfortable with place shifting. “We hope that this will open up a dialog,” he said.

But the bigger issue seems to me that Sling got its value proposition backward. It is launching with new devices that out of the box don’t add that much functionality over the previous generation. Sure, 1080p is nice, but matters little on a phone screen, and just a little more on an iPad.

Meanwhile, viewing has evolved, and the traditional place shifting approach may not work as well anymore as it used to. In many households, people are now watching multiple programs on multiple screens at the same time, with only one of them being a TV, and others including iPads and laptops. But with place shifting, everyone is still watching the same – your cable box simply can’t serve more than one stream, no matter the cable connecting it to the Slingbox.

Sling potentially has some solutions for these problems, as I was told that the box will eventually get access to a VOD service. The company is also looking into second-screen functionality, making use of the fact that its boxes are sitting in between your cable box and your TV, which could allow all kinds of overlays. However, don’t expect the Slingbox to turn into a full-blown media streaming device with a plethora of apps. “We don’t think the world needs another app store,” said Tannenbaum.

Where’s the vision?

And then there is the personal media angle. The new boxes include functionality for Airplay-like photo slide shows from your mobile devices, and I was shown advanced functionality that inlcudes the ability to constantly synch all of your mobile phone’s personal media to a hard drive attached to your Slingbox – and then consume it on any screen. That’s neat, but doesn’t seem world changing. I already have two services backing up all my camera phone photos to the cloud, and a NAS for local copies. So why add yet another media hub to the mix?

Sure, you might say, that’s you – and admittedly, I’m not the average consumer (and being a cord cutter, not part of Sling’s target audience anyway). But I’d argue that the average consumer won’t spend $300 on a Slingbox either. Instead, they’re gonna just install the HBO Go app, and their cable company’s app, and find that it works well enough, despite all of the aforementioned shortcomings.

What’s missing from the new generation of Slingboxes is a vision. Something grand, something that would change TV like place shifting and time shifting have done in the past. The Slingbox 500 may technically be capable of delivering this, but and may get much better over time – but with its current iteration, it’s just a slightly updated version of something that was cool four years ago.

]]>Sling Media today released an iPad-specific version of its SlingPlayer Mobile application. The app, like its iPhone counterpart, allows you to stream live TV from your set-top cable or satellite box to your iPad wirelessly. You need to have either a Slingbox SOLO or PRO-HD connected to your home theatre setup in order for the new app to work, though.

SlingPlayer Mobile for iPad delivers a higher-resolution image tailored to Apple’s 9.7-inch tablet screen, and features a redesigned program guide using native iPad UI elements. You also get a recent channel feature that provides a heck of a lot more versatility than that “Last” button on your remote. SlingPlayer Mobile works over both Wi-Fi and 3G, although in my brief experience with the iPhone app, quality degrades considerably outside of your home network.

The app is one of the higher-priced, consumer-focused ones we’ve seen yet in the iTunes store, at $29.99. Users who’ve already paid $29.99 for the iPhone app will likely be disappointed that Sling Media opted to release a separate app instead of introducing universal support to the existing software to make it compatible with both. In its official PR release, Sling suggests that iPhone app owners can continue to use it in “Compatibility Mode” if they’d rather not pay for the app a second time.

I question Sling Media’s decision to ask users pay a full $30 a second time over for an app, since many of those looking to buy the iPad version will likely already have the iPhone one. It seems especially risky now that Netflix and Hulu Plus make streaming from cable and satellite sources less of a priority for many iPad owners. Anyone planning on ponying up for iPad access?

]]>Viacom vs. YouTube Is a Microcosm of the Entertainment Industry; even as thousands of artists and labels are embracing the internet, the top management at the big labels are behind laws that could give their companies the power to shut down any tech firm that attempts to out-innovate them. (The Guardian)

ITV Online Sales Unclear, But Summer Web Investment Coming; ITV (LSE: ITV) is now hiding its quarterly online revenue in its combined Broadcasting & Online category, but says it is committing incremental investment in online over the second half. (paidContent:UK)

HBO on Your iPad? There Won’t Be an App for That; during his company’s earnings call, Time Warner boss Jeff Bewkes batted back suggestions for an HBO iPad app. (MediaMemo)

NAB Sez Retransmission-Consent Regime is Working; in a meeting with FCC Republican commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, NAB representatives said programming costs are rising more slowly than other costs and can’t be blamed for rising cable rates. (Multichannel News)

SlingPlayer For Android Secretly Jumps Into Private Beta; Sling is sending out email invitations for a private beta of the Android app. (Phandroid)

blip.tv Announces Expansion of National and European Sales Teams; the web video firm hired Internet Works to represent it in the UK, and brought on Rafi Mamalian as its West Coast Sales Director and Phil Meier as its Midwest Sales Director. (blip.tv blog)

Chinese Consumers Surf the Internet While Watching TV; of the Chinese surveyed by Nielsen as part of its first “three screen” study there, nearly half — 44 percent — engaged in “simultaneous viewing.” (Nielsen blog)

]]>Dish Network subscribers will soon be able to watch their TV anywhere through PCs and mobile phones, as the satellite TV provider is finally making Sling-enabled DVRs available to its customers, about a year after they were expected to ship. Dish will sell the ViP922 SlingLoaded DVR at a suggested retail price of $699, with leasing options also available to its customers.

The SlingLoaded DVR is key to Dish Network’s TV Everywhere strategy, which will enable Dish customers to watch live and recorded TV that they’ve already paid for from PCs and mobile devices such as the iPhone and Blackberrys.

Unlike Comcast, Time Warner Cable and other cable companies, which are pitching TV Everywhere services through on demand video portals that require authentication, Dish’s approach cuts out the need for service providers and TV programmers to create separate web sites for subscribers to view content. Furthermore, Sling-enabled DVRs will make all linear and recorded video content available to a subscriber on external devices, not just an on-demand library of content that is chosen by cable programmers and dependent on licensing agreements they have with rights holders.

Dish will begin taking orders for the ViP922 SlingLoaded DVR this week. In addition to the $699 initial price point, Dish subscribers will be charged a $10 DVR fee for use of the SlingLoaded DVR, as opposed to the $6 fee for standard DVR usage.